Perception and production of L2 Arabic emphatic consonants: The role of communicative and traditional form-based approaches

This study examines the extent to which the communicative and traditional form-based approaches play a role in the perception and production of Arabic emphatic consonants by native English speakers. To this end, 19 English-speaking learners of Arabic from the University of Kansas participated in two experiments: perception and production. The experiments were followed by a 90-min period of instruction. The perception and production experiments included pre and posttests. The results of the experiments showed that there is a positive correlation between both approaches, i.e., communicative and traditional form-based in the perception and production of the Arabic emphatic consonants. The results also showed that the Arabic plain consonants were assimilated to their English counterparts and the emphatic consonants were not assimilated to any category in English. Further, the contrast between plain and emphatic consonants was found to be perceptually salient; both the control and experimental groups’ overall performance on the perception tasks was excellent in both the pre- and post-tests. In closing, the theoretical and pedagogical implications of the findings are discussed.